


Dreamcatcher

by larkshymm



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Game)
Genre: ??? to friends to ???, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Other, canon is AT LEAST four miles away, grimm is grimmchild in this, just a kid and their god growin up together, slowish burn, tags will be added as needed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-09-20 23:57:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17032356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larkshymm/pseuds/larkshymm
Summary: The Nightmare King was slain, the Dream conquered.And Grimm finds an unexpected second chance in a place called Hallownest and a young bug in need of afriend.





	1. Prologue: The Dream

**Author's Note:**

> edit: v1.1 minor edits, tags tweaked and adjusted

I was a fool not to see it coming.

 

As long as there had been a Dream, there had been Us: Order, and Chaos. Our powers waxed and waned, an endless dance, a balance. As it had always been.

 

The travellers brought change. Shades flitting through our realms. In time, we realized they were spirits; echoes of mortal lives from a realm just beyond our own. We both had our interests. I found in those echoes nourishment; their regrets burned richly in my heart, and once I had feasted, as was our way, chaos passed into order. The shades moved on, unburdened. To you.

 

You… you were consumed by this other realm. By the stories the shades told you. The travellers became more; no longer dead echoes, but living spirits, seeking your light.

 

I did not care. I did not need to entice them or win their adoration. I performed my duty as I always had, seeking travellers within my shadows, devouring their burdens…

 

I… did not realize.

 

Your new followers adored you. Adored your light, adored the peace you reigned over. They did not see our balance, and I would one day learn that you did not tell them. I became a monster instead of your other half. A beast of Nightmare and the Darkness.

 

And one day, you offered them a Pure Dream.

 

No more Darkness.

 

My realm began to shrink. The balance tipped in your favor, upheld by their fervent devotion. For the first time in my existence, I knew true hunger. Travellers no longer came into my realm. Your moths awaited them, steered them away, filled them with fear of the Nightmare as they called me… Their lanterns began to burn me--wards, I would learn--and I did not understand. I could not at the time.

 

I was weakened. My flame began to gutter. I was mindless, desperate.

 

I found a dreamer. One that had slipped through onto my roads.

 

I devoured them whole.

 

And the next.

 

And the next.

But it was not enough. Your followers became more frantic upon seeing my atrocities. Their lanterns hemmed the shadows in, tighter and tighter. My fire dimmed and sputtered. I struggled to survive, picking at the scraps of what had been our realm, until I could barely move.

 

… I remember your Dreamers shrouded in scorching light. I could smell their doubts, their fears. So close. A feast I was too weak to claim.

 

All around me… closer…

 

… And… you.

 

It had been so long since I had seen you. You were so radiant, it pained me to look upon your form. But I did. You would help me. You would see. We had been side by side for millenia uncounted. Even as wild as I had become, my heart was glad to see you. My tongue was too parched for words as you bent before me, cradling my head in your wings.

 

Your eyes met mine, your brilliance shrouded just a moment. You leant close, your crown shining in flickering torch light.

 

And you told me to die.

 

Their blades tore me apart. They pinned me, drove blades of dream--your dream, your light--through me until the land pooled crimson beneath my tattered body, your ash-white fur spattered scarlet as you withdrew from me. Wretched and writhing, too weak to even call my flame in defense.

 

_Why…?_

 

Only a gurgle rose in my throat. I could feel my shadows burning away. My form crumbling into smoke. But mortals alone could not slay a god.

 

The last I saw was your blade before you, a spine of the brightest light I’d ever seen.

 

And I died.

  
  


… but not entirely.

 

You were not the only one changed by your believers. I was the Nightmare. Your shadow.

 

I had believers of my own. The Nightmare King, they called me.

 

My body lay in the Dream, bound and sealed. That incarnation, dead. Yet the Heart still burned. Only a flicker in the ashes, but enough for rebirth.

 

Enough that when your Dreamers counted me felled, others crept to my side. They saved the Heart. In a secret part of the Dream, they stoked its flame. I do not know how long it took, but one day… I was reborn.

 

Small and helpless, but alive.

 

I remember the first bug I saw that day. A large moth with a ruff of faded scarlet fur. So shocked that he dropped his candle when I turned my eyes to him. He fed me sparks of flame, disbelief writ in his eyes. He told me what had happened. The state of the Dream. Your kingdom now.

 

… I do not remember his name. I remember the music he played for me. The name he gave me.

 

“Grimm.”

 

The others used it, too. There were not many of them, but they all came to welcome my rebirth. All masked and cloaked. I learned they had to; this dangerous double life they led in your kingdom, hiding your baffling devotion to me. I never learned _why_. But in time, I became… proud. They showed me the lanterns they had created to capture the remnants of my flames. The little webs they wove to catch their own dreams and nightmares to help sustain me.

 

I slowly grew, hidden away in this forgotten section of the Dream. When I could, I taught them magics in return. Magics to hide, to disguise themselves, to traverse the few shaded pockets of what had been my realm. I learned to speak as they did. They told me of the realm beyond the Dream, but little of themselves. Even so, they were like a… ‘family’ to me.

 

Every dawn they left, whoever had managed to slip away to attend me, but every dusk another came. I heard their whispers of your growing court, your extending reach. I saw their fears of discovery and taught them all I could. But I was still weak, a larva of a god.

 

And one day… none of them returned.

 

The ragged tent lay silent that night and I waited. The lanterns above gleamed a steady, soothing red, yet unease crept upon me. _Where are they?_

 

The night wore on and on. I dared venture to the tent’s opening, peering out into the Dream. Gold streaked the horizon when I heard footsteps at last. I smelled fear.

 

It was him, the first one. He scooped me up, tucking me against his ruff. It was uneven. I peered at it. It was singed, dotted with ash. I waved one feeble limb up at him, but for the first time, he ignored me. We passed deeper into the tent, past the familiar tattered pillows and cramped shelves of baubles and novels and scrolls into another room, lit only in deep scarlet.

 

Above us, there came a slow, steady beat. _My heart._ I stared upwards, still in his arms.

 

“Trust me, Master.”

 

I chirped up at him. He set me down, stepping backwards. A torch appeared in his hands in a burst of smoke, dark metal glinting. He began to speak, words bending into song, crackling with magic. Deep red-orange runes swirled in the air, winding into circles and arcs above me that burned like tiny embers. I gazed up at him, and closed my eyes again.

 

It had been too good to last.

 

Heat gathered around me, his magic building, collecting my flame. I could feel myself change, my limbs becoming wings, fire heating me from within… My heart thudded faster with his song, and I felt it: baleful, horrible light, that cocktail of fear and hatred closing in. I snapped my eyes open, screeching a warning in time to see white light lance through the rough tent cloth, through _him._

 

His spell snapped shut around me as he staggered. His eyes met mine as he inclined his head.

 

And it was all gone.

 

I was alone. Locked away in a facet of the Dream.

 

You would not kill me this time. He had ensured that.

 

But as time wore on, I came to accept that hunger would.


	2. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello :) 
> 
> apologies for taking so long to get this revised version up! it gave me a devil of a time
> 
> i don't think any particular warnings are needed for this chapter, but if you think something is let me know? thank you
> 
> oh also, for what it's worth and because i'm terrified i didn't make it clear enough, grimm = grimmchild for this. he's a disgruntled little larva, not his tall leggy self
> 
> also also, the rest of this story will be in 3rd person via Grimm's perspective (barring some exceptions later on)
> 
> (thanks <3)

The facet was breaking. 

 

It had been his musician’s final work: a shard of Dream, warded and hidden by song and spell where Grimm had awoken, alone. But safe. He and the Heart both spirited away before either could be struck down again. 

 

Now, with his limbs tucked beneath himself and eyes half-lidded as gnawing hunger ate at his stomach, Grimm watched with nothing more than the mildest interest as the once-luminous edges of his tiny world flaked away like nothing more than an old, empty shell. Long ago, it would have worried him. It probably still should.

 

But, well. He had no way to truly measure how long he had been locked here—and he couldn’t help but wonder where or when his acolyte had  _ learned _ such a spell, certainly not from  _ him _ —and beyond the runes that enclosed this place he had only seen darkness, a truly empty abyss yawning out as far as his eyes could see. With nothing outside with which to mark the ages, and his own grasp of the concept admittedly fuzzy to begin with, he could only base his guesses as to the length of his imprisonment on two things.

 

The first; his anger had burned out. 

 

When originally he had woken here, his fury had been little less than an inferno, raging at everything, but Her most of all. It had warmed him, blazing in his chest as he had tried to break free, fueling him as he bashed against the wards until his little wings went numb, spat flame and cursed until he coughed ash and smoke, bent his will against the glinting spell work to try and unwind it from within, but for naught. Even when he lay there exhausted, he’d still been able to muster enough spite to crawl to the edge of the shard and use this form’s pitiful fangs to bite and gnaw at each bit of web and rune, the way it crackled against him only encouraging his rancor until eventually he realized… it was pointless. 

 

What would await him, if he managed to wriggle his way out? If he was lucky, the abyss would only be a cloak and he’d be back in the Dream, but expecting anything other than ‘the Radiant One’s’ devotees to welcome his return would be… foolhardy. They’d probably skewer him like a meddlesome pest, and that was assuming they  _ didn’t _ recognize him.

Which… the chances of that were favorable at least. His wings had long withered away, his chitin faded to grey, and he doubted  _ anything _ of his current form would recall that of the Nightmare King’s majesty.

 

As for  _ why _ he had withered back into the form of a new hatchling… it brought him to his second method of counting the years: the Heart.

 

He had not seen his Heart before his rebirth; he had not yet existed, of course, but they had told him of its state when first it had been pulled from the wreckage of his original body as the last living spark of Nightmare. He remembered a large moth amongst his followers, her half mask doing little to hide her glee as she told him in  _ exquisitely impressive _ detail how they had… repaired it. Only long after it had been stitched together and flame begun to coalesce within it once more had he been… reborn, and in his time with them, he had watched it grow brighter and hotter, fed upon the essence they gathered with torch and web, and as it grew so had he. All it had taken to sate his own hunger had been mere wisps, a fact that had not changed after his imprisonment. 

 

Yet the only source here… was the Heart itself. 

 

He had never taken much; after all, he couldn’t shake his unease at consuming his own Heart’s fuel, but when the tightness in his gut grew unbearable, he had… sometimes allowed himself to flutter up and tug a wisp free. But such a source was finite, and he would not risk his core over hunger, especially as over time, the Heart began to falter. 

 

As it burned away its own fuel, he began to wonder: how much time had to pass before a god’s heart failed? Its crimson light fading, its heat diminished to a mere flicker, its beating weaker and slower? He supposed he would never know the actual number, what little good such a fact would have done him anyway, but there had to be something to knowing it could happen at _ all _ . A poor measurement, perhaps, but one nonetheless.

 

It slowed and he grew more feeble. It slowed and his fire dimmed to something less than the last embers of a brazier. His rage faded to quiet apathy and hunger clouded his thoughts as his world crumbled around him, he found himself wondering which would last longer: himself, or the spell? 

 

His acolyte had truly been something else. They all had. 

 

Emptiness gnawed in his gut and runes around him winked out one by one, his eyes closing longer each time he let himself drift and the dreams and memories that greeted him became harder to resist. They were warm and crimson, filled by the endless ever-shifting skies beneath his wings, but mainly they featured a shabby tent, carved masks and music and ritual and comfort that went beyond the cushions half-stuffed or the musician’s soft ruff, always open for a quick nap. Grimm lingered on the little things; how his Musician had huffed his words under his breath when no one was listening, the timbre of his voice just on the edge of song, the way his claws had looked tipped in ink or dancing over his instrument, how he had worked diligently, threading silk and beads into new dreamcatchers whenever he had a moment, and Grimm wasn’t sure  _ why _ these were the things, why  _ this _ moth was the one that came to him—shouldn’t the thought of himself in his prime have burned brighter, more fondly?—but he didn’t really mind. It was… soothing.

 

This death… wouldn’t be so bad. 

 

Agonizingly slow, for at least his last time had been  _ quick  _ in the end, but at least this time he knew what would happen, knew how it would feel to wink out of existence once more instead of facing that precipice blindly. But… mainly he found comfort in the fact that it must  _ rankle _ Her that she hadn’t succeeded in snuffing him out the first time, and now her chance would be gone. Claimed by something as mundane as  _ time _ instead of Her. 

 

That brought a raspy chuckle to his throat at least. He surveyed his little domain with dark eyes, his gut’s emptiness a long-familiar backnote to his existence as he noted every flickering strand of magic, growing dimmer and dimmer as the flame smoldered low, the Heart thudding above him in its weak rhythm…

 

He supposed… he was content. His memories beckoned, and he answered.

 

He curled up, tucking his tail beneath his chin, and let out one last sigh. 

 

His eyes slid shut.

 

_ Thmp.  _

 

_ Th-thmp. _

 

_ Thmp. _

 

_ … _

 

_ … … _

 

_ … sktch.  _

 

Grimm twitched. That couldn’t be right. There was only him and the Heart, nothing else--

 

…  _ sktch skrtch. _

 

His eyes snapped open. It was louder that time. Possibly… real…? He uncurled himself, squeaking quietly, weak and not-quite but nearly hopeful, and peered out beyond the red-lit gloom, searching for the source of that  _ noise _ ...

 

He went still. It was not his followers, and it wasn’t Her. It was something else. 

 

Beyond the shard, shadows coiled out of the abyss. Their tips tangled into black tendrils barbed and forked that dragged against the enchanted webs, seeking and sprawling, snuffing runes out like feeble candlelight in their wake.  They spread like a briar, thorned and wild, climbing along the shard’s walls and straining against it as it struggled, reduced nearly to its barest framework, and yet it still held. Grimm watched, his heart pattering a frantic beat in his chest. 

 

_ Ahh... There you are, little Flame. _

 

His heart stopped. 

 

The voice was little more than a sigh but impossible to ignore. Its whispers echoed in the shard, a susurrus that chilled the very air. A voice long unused, a being of shade older than he had ever been and he felt its gaze upon him, pin him on the spot like a morsel caught in a spider’s web and he felt  _ small _ . 

 

Twin spots of white began to pop into existence beyond the seeking tendrils: a pair, then two, then a dozen peering in at him. Shades. Their voices were high pitched, chittering and giddy as they flitted near, curling their pitch-black claws around the remaining runes like hatchlings catching fireflies until only the barest shell of magic endured, hemmed in by shadows and tiny shades that laughed and sang as they tossed feeble sparks of soul back and forth, utterly unconcerned with him. 

 

The voice cut through their revelry. Closer, deeper, slithering like cold ink down his shell. 

 

_ It is not yet your time to fade. One of mine has need of you.  _

 

The shades and thorns parted, the shard’s shell exposed. Eight massive white eyes split the blackness, a figure crowned with curving horns looking in at him. Four sets of claws reached forward, their tips alone enough to crumple the final webs of spell like naught more than wet paper, smoke and shadows and a smell like ink spilling in as those claws closed in around him and Heart both—

 

He was transfixed. Frozen on the spot, body trembling, voice caught back in his throat and… he hissed. Nothing more than a tiny sputter of sparks against the dark.

 

And he could have sworn it paused, a god among gods breathing a fond noise into the void, before the claws closed and his world went black. 

 

_______________________

  
  


The scent of woodsmoke came to him first. Familiar and biting, its telltale warmth close on its heels. Then came the sputter and crackle of flames. The pop and snap of burning wood. Soft cloth draped over him, velvety against his shell. The unusually subdued rumble of his stomach.

 

A soft clink of glass, tapping clawsteps on stone. A squeak of a door, open and shut. 

 

Grimm opened his eyes. His body felt... reluctant, heavy and wrong, like cold honey down to the tip of his tail despite the warmth of the room.

 

He was a place he’d never been, and unsurprised by it. Flames danced in an iron grate before him, the stone of the fireplace pure white marble, artfully engraved and worked with obvious skill. An emblem drew his eye above the mantle: a chrysalis, he thought, crowned and winged, bordered by smoothly carved waves and swirls that split the stone in deep, curling channels like a living tangle of vines.

 

… Whose realm  _ was _ this? Whose emblem was it that crowned the fire, topped the ornate pillars along the walls, was worked even into the wrought iron of the windows? 

 

It was lavish, beyond any place he’d been before. Nothing short of a palace cast in white, every surface white or shining silver or onyx and polished to a mirror-finish that made the flame’s light dance warm and orange gold across the entire room. A lush bed sat nearby, low to the stone floor, and a wall of tall, flawless glass windows sat beside it, hung with velvety grey curtains parted just enough to let in a sliver of blue-tinged light. A table sat beside the windows, obviously made for a small bug, and a riot of glossy green plants crowded the corner behind it, dim lanterns full of glimmering lumaflies strung just above them.

 

And not a trace of that lord of void.

 

He peered suspiciously at the few shadows lurking in the corners, flickering and dancing with firelight, but they shifted only as they should  and no eyes peered back at him. No pitch-black claws grasped the stone, no tendrils coiled and twisted like living things in their depths. They were normal. 

 

But, as he looked around, something felt… off. 

 

He felt… better. A low bar, granted, but his stomach no longer felt like a yawning pit; simply… hungry. His limbs were tired but not leaden. His vision was fogged with sleep alone. Ash no longer clogged his mouth; instead, it tasted… sweet. 

 

… And the room was quiet. 

 

He could not hear the Heart.

 

He could not  _ feel  _ it.

 

_ It wasn’t here. _

 

His chest should have thudded as his breath quickened, as he pressed his limbs to his chitin, but there was nothing. His chitin was warm. He could feel his sparks of flame rekindled to the barest of embers,  _ somehow _ , but the silence pressed in against him, questions swarming through his head, a chaotic blur he couldn’t hope to follow as his breath rushed and wheezed, his chest too tight, his body locked in place because  _ where was the Heart?  _

 

He heard the door squeak back open. A gasp just barely audible over his own, a frantic tap of claws on stone. He felt tiny hands on his shell, a soft cloak around him. The scent of something sweet and ripe nearby, but underneath, a sharp smell like _ - _

 

_ Black claws, massive and cold. White gleaming in the endless darkness. The overpowering scent of night and ink and terrifying emptiness as void closed around him-- _

 

He shrieked. He writhed, blind with panic, struggling away from the claws that tried to soothe him until the bug released him, but too slow. His fire too dim to spit, he sank his sharp, tiny fangs into thin chitin, their cry oddly soft and muffled as he tasted  _ void _ on his tongue and hissed and snarled and darted away, scrabbling past the curtains, pinging against the cool glass again and again until his head ached and swam, his vision slowly coming back, his breath fogging the window before him as he huddled on the sill. 

 

… He could hear the other bug. Hear their breath, hear it hitch with pain. Hear their claws tap-tap on the floor, but away this time. His own breath rough and quick, the quiet in his chest deeply disconcerting, the fog on the glass before him all he could see. 

 

… There were lights behind it. Distant but bright enough to cast blurred halos on the glass, broken by slow rivulets tracing down the thick pane, sparkling with soft blue light caught and refracted in each drop. Thick bars of iron curved through the glass, like the partings in a bug’s shell, and the sparse drops of water pooled and dripped down them, skittering past his sight. He watched them, watched the way the distant lights shifted and gleamed, the fog slowly fading as he calmed and took in the sight beyond the glass. 

 

It was a city, or perhaps a truly sprawling castle. A sea of white marble crafted into delicate exquisite forms and spires that shone with an inner pale light in the darkness. He could pick out windows and pathways, lush with plants and gardens and hanging lanterns, even strangely clad bugs here and there among the streets, too far away to pick out detail, but he could see them wandering the streets, gathered in brightly lit pools on the cobbles, even a few fussing with the greenery that bordered and climbed near every surface. It was the most bugs he’d ever seen in one place, and as he searched, he realized there was not a moth among them. He followed up one spire, gleaming white and gold from every window, and above, far above, big enough he thought even his old self could have spread his wings, he could pick out the ceiling of a vast cavern that glimmered with a dust of softly swaying blue between the tooth-like spears of stone. 

 

And among it all, not a single glyph wove itself into the air. 

 

This… wasn’t the Dream. The golden light was soft and tame, the blue above like dim stars. The cities and stones did not shift around their inhabitants, made and unmade by their passing and will. But… he was here. He could feel the solid stone and chilly glass and taste and smell this world he was not supposed to be part of--for he knew that She had tried, had heard his acolytes speak of it in low whispers that She had failed to leave the Dream despite her strength--and all he could think was that somehow, the Shade had done this, for… for the bug on the other side of the curtain?  

 

_ One of mine _ , it had said. 

 

He could taste their blood on his tongue, hear them slowly  _ tik tik _ -ing around the room, closer. The curtains parted ever so slightly and he puffed instinctively, only for a small bowl to be pushed through the gap, filled to the brim with berries of deep red, their scent sweet and heady, and then the little black claw--wrapped in cloth, stained with dark smudges--withdrew, the curtains tucked back into place.  

 

They did not speak. 

 

The room was silent but for the sound of the fire. 

 

He sniffed. 

 

His mouth watered and some foggy part of him recognized the scent, the sweetness lingering on his tongue when he had stirred, the absence of that hunger that had torn at him for years. He could… almost remember it; being held close and warmed, sticky-sweet bits slipped between his fangs by careful claws. 

 

… Whoever they were, they had tended him. Whoever they were, they were somehow tied to that god in the shadows. 

 

… Why?  _ How _ ?

 

Slowly, he turned on the sill. Their offering sat beside him, tempting but… he wanted answers. He nudged open the curtains. 

 

They stood back several steps away, claws pressed together, one clutching a bit of cloth to where he had bitten. Their mask was bright white, nearly luminous like the city below, their cloak soft grey, their chitin black as charcoal. Their horns were short and rounded, a single little notch at their tips, and… that crowned and winged emblem glinted at their throat. 

 

He stared at them and they stared back with dark, hidden eyes. 

 

Carefully, they raised their unwrapped claw, and waved. 

 

Hesitantly… Grimm waved back. 

 

They practically glowed. 

 

Without missing a beat, they scrambled to the table, snatching paper and a well-worn bit of charcoal before they came darting back, holding it up in the sliver of light from the windows. The writing already upon it had all the marks of someone young and utterly determined to make it clear, the rounded symbols painstakingly neat.

 

_ Hello _

 

_ I’m called ‘Ghost’ _

 

A curious name. Grimm nodded slowly, and ‘Ghost’ near bounced on the spot. Their hurried bandages nearly unwound in their excitement, forcing them to pause and rewind them around the oozing bite, but even that did not seem to faze them long. As soon as they finished, they looked back up at him, their claws clasped together, unabashedly eager, and… it was… strange. Even with their mask hiding their face, he could feel the  _ hope _ in their gaze, and couldn’t help but feel baffled by it. 

 

But his stomach growled, and his body was heavy and tired. There would be time to ask more questions later, but for now, he jabbed his nose towards the window, squeaking a questioning noise, motioning around the room with one little limb, and felt nothing but relief as they seemed to understand his unspoken questions. They knelt and scribbled on the back of the paper. 

 

_ This is Hallownest _

 

_ My home _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright! we're here! 3000 words later! 
> 
> so, from here on out the fic is relatively domestic, at least so far in planning; the life of a nightmare god adjusting to living with like. mortal bugs* /cough
> 
> i'm not sure when the next chapter will come up so i'm not going to make any over-eager promises, and i admit i want to take a small break from thinking about it after this one stalled me up for an age, but i will try and make it at least within a similar timespan
> 
> please let me know if you have any questions/noticed anything that needs fixing or clarifying (and if you want a quicker response, hit me up on tumblr at hollowthyme)
> 
> and have a good day guys!

**Author's Note:**

> o/ 
> 
> Welcome to my cave and thank you! I hope you've enjoyed the prologue section! I intended to do more tweaking with it but also like... fuck it, you know? My plan is to write the first proper chapter tomorrow while we're all ignoring tumblr, but if that doesn't work out I'll at least have it by next weekend. 
> 
> Anyway, here's my mythos playground section! If you've got any questions or comments feel free to leave 'em! See ya 'round!


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